Following the huge success of the first four volumes of Prisoner Cell Block H on DVD, the iconic Australian ‘women behind bars’ TV series continues with the 11th October 2010 release of the eight-disc boxed set, Prisoner Cell Block H: Volume 5, courtesy of Shock Entertainment and FremantleMedia Enterprises.
As regular vistors to this blog will know, we promote cult entertainment as a means to make a living and to some this might mean our recommendations are somehow compromised. I’m here to say different. I’ve spent my life obsessing over strange old movies, music and TV and to finally make a perculiar lifestyle choice pay is a blessing. I say all this because with Prisoner Cell Block H I feel like I’ve got my dream gig.
When it comes to outrageous, offbeat and downright strange entertainment, Prisoner is a clear contender for the greatest cult TV show of all time. Yes, I love the dark, surreal world of trashy Euro-Sleaze directors like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. I love the wild, wild world of Coffin Joe movies and I can’t get enough of the various grisly hues of Italian Horror, but in general, these are things I learnt to love later on (in the case of Italian Horror, I was young enough to have no real clue about their origins when I was an underage renter of horror tapes).
The two things I really treasure are Hammer Movies and Prisoner. For me, Prisoner is being in my late teens, in an altered state with good friends, howling and cheering along in a late night bedsit as Bea Smith steam presses a rivals hand. It’s trips to the 24 hour garage in the ad break to buy Cigarettes and ‘munchies’. Prisoner is the TV wallpaper for my youthful hedonism, a strange cult shared by a few select, generally quite weird friends (including my sadly departed best friend who was one of the UK’s most Prisoner obsessed individuals with a taped-off-the-telly collection to prove it). When the early 90s recession bit and none of us had jobs, bedtime was pushed back to some foggy hour of the morning and a steady diet of scratchy Prisoner tapes, old Zombie movies and creaky gothic horror became a minor obsession.
That’s the great thing about this show, it manages to marry everything people love about eccentric Aussie Soap (the wildly flip-flopping plot arcs, the cheap sets, over-the-top characters, epic cliffhangers) with a streak of exploitation nastiness that occasionally shocked the room into silence. Remember, the 70s was a time of struggle for Women’s equality and there were a lot of very sexist, borderline offensive Women-in-Prison movies in the fleapits and Grindhouses. Prisoner manages to tone down the nudity and gratuitous violence of these films without losing too much shock value, then marries it to a rolling drama format to produce something utterly unique. Two hours of hardcore ‘chicks-in-chains’ trash with heart and soul which also showcases some the amazing, strong and outspoken female characters at a time when Miss World pagents and TV Quiz show dollybirds were the norm.
More Cell Block Musings next week…
Check out highlights from the as yet unseen Prisoner Documentary. ON THE INSIDE
